The stories in Helen Oyeyemi's stunning collection What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours look at keys that lock or unlock everything from magical diaries to hearts. Highly imaginative and enchanting, Oyeyemi's writing in What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours will take readers on a journey to a world that is at once strange and intoxicating — this collection is Oyeyemi at her best.

At the center of Jonathan Lee's brilliant new novel High Dive is an assassination plot: In 1984, a bomb is set in place at a hotel in Brighton, England, in an attempt to take down British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her Cabinet. A poignant, multi-voiced account of the precarious weeks leading up to the explosion, High Dive offers an intimate look at tragedy, loyalty, and a pivotal moment in history.

Alexander Chee's novel Queen of the Night is a vivid, glittering portrait of Paris in the 19th century and its opera scene. A spellbinding story of intrigue and self-reinvention, Queen of the Night follows famed soprano Lilliet Berne from her humble beginnings as an orphan to her rise as an opera star and all the secrets she finds herself entangled in along the way.

Karan Mahajan's The Association of Small Bombs is a deeply compassionate exploration of the effects terrorism has on both the victims and the perpetrators. In 1996, a small bomb detonates in a South Delhi marketplace, killing two young boys and traumatizing their surviving friend. Dark, devastating, and sharply wise, The Association of Small Bombs is a tale of loss, grief, guilt, and redemption.

John Wray's The Lost Time Accidents is a wild, sweeping adventure through time, science, and one family's curious legacy. When Waldemar "Waldy" Tolliver wakes up one day to find that he has been exiled from the flow of time, he desperately searches for a way back but must also reconcile with his family's secrets and a failed romance.

Kaitlyn Greenidge's masterful debut novel We Love You, Charlie Freeman is at heart an examination of race and language — an African-American family is hired by a New England research institute to raise and teach sign language to a chimpanzee, but the institute has a shockingly dark past. We Love You, Charlie Freeman skillfully tackles history and heavy subjects with both humor and thoughtfulness; this book proves Greenidge will be a literary force to be reckoned with.

Garth Greenwell's debut novel What Belongs to You aches with desire and tenderness: an American professor in Bulgaria encounters a male prostitute named Mitko in a public bathroom, beginning a complex sexual relationship between the two that will have enormous ramifications for them both. Lyrical and haunting, What Belongs to You is a rumination on lust, shame, violence, and the ways in which sexual and emotional pain stays with and shapes us.

In Idra Novey's quirky debut novel, Ways to Disappear, a famous but debt-stricken Brazilian novelist vanishes, leaving her children and one young American translator determined to solve the puzzling circumstances of her disappearance. Fast-paced and colorful, Ways to Disappear is part mystery, part romance, but 100% a delight.

The nonfiction debut of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words is a memoir recounting Lahiri's sometimes difficult love affair with the Italian language. Passionate, moving, and strikingly honest, In Other Words is the powerful story of one writer learning how to read, write, and speak in a new voice.

In Don DeLillo's newest novel, Zero K, death is no longer a certainty of human life — a secret scientific compound in a remote location preserves bodies indefinitely until future technology and medicine can heal and revive them. Moving yet often funny, Zero K is a thoughtful meditation on what we choose to preserve or leave behind, the role of death in human existence, and the nature of our responsibility for the future.

Sari Wilson's powerful debut, Girl Through Glass, is the story of a young girl who grows up too quickly in the harshly competitive world of New York City ballet in the 1970s. A dark and utterly engrossing coming-of-age novel, Girl Through Glass is a haunting portrait of obsession, ambition, sacrifice, and the secrets one woman thought she left in the past.

Sunil Yapa's ambitious debut novel, Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist, is set amidst the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, where the lives of seven people are irrevocably changed in the ensuing violence and fight for power. Beautifully wrought and sympathetic, Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist gazes unflinchingly at the depths of humanity and compassion, weaving seven disparate voices together into one raw account of the protests.

Louise Erdrich's stunning new novel LaRose opens with an unforgivable tragedy: In the summer of 1999, a North Dakota man accidentally shoots and kills his neighbor's youngest son — a boy who is also his own son's best friend. In penance, he gives up his son LaRose to the grief-stricken neighbor's family. Luminous and deeply affecting, LaRose examines the fragile bond between two heartbroken families and the complexities of justice, loss, healing, and redemption.

Alex Abramovich's Bullies is the provocative account of a most unusual friendship: Decades after elementary school, Abramovich encounters his childhood bully in California, who is now the president of a motorcycle club in Oakland. Thought-provoking and fearless, Bullies offers sharp insight into violence, masculinity, and the history and future of one of America's most dangerous cities.

Set in one very true-to-life Brooklyn neighborhood, Emma Straub's new novel Modern Lovers revolves around a group of former college friends (and bandmates) now all grown up with their own kids and struggling to accept the realities of middle age. Wise and often hilarious, Modern Lovers is a testament to how the passions and secrets of our youth can last well into adulthood.

Tony Tulathimutte's brilliant debut novel is hilarious and heartbreaking all at once. A spot-on, satirical portrait of modern San Francisco and the privilege that inhabits it, Private Citizens follows four once-estranged friends who must grapple with their own ambition and subsequent failures in the frenetic world of the Bay Area. Brimming with wit and heart, Private Citizens is an impressive debut from a sharp new voice.

Patricia Engel's moving new novel The Veins of the Ocean follows a young woman who feels partially responsible for the crime her brother was ultimately put to death for, and her journey to the Florida Keys, where she meets an exiled Cuban man with baggage of his own. Beautifully wrought and vibrant, The Veins of the Ocean is a compelling meditation on guilt, nature, redemption, and the immigrant experience.

Nayomi Munaweera's What Lies Between Us is the tragic story of a young girl in Sri Lanka who flees to America with her mother after her father's death. Despite reinventing herself in a new country, she still carries the demons of her past, which finally lead her to commit an unthinkable act. Told from inside her prison cell, What Lies Between Us is a dark, gripping testament to the ways in which childhood trauma can continue to haunt us long into adulthood.

At the heart of Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney's highly anticipated debut novel The Nest lies a very dysfunctional family: The four adult Plumb siblings have spent their lives waiting to finally receive "The Nest," their joint trust fund, in hopes of it solving their problems, when the oldest sibling's car accident suddenly endangers it all. Largehearted and witty, The Nest is a tender portrait of a family who must face their past choices and the consequences of their expected inheritance on their relationships and one another.

Set in the bustling metropolis of Lagos, A. Igoni Barrett's provocative novel Blackass is a searing satire about a Nigerian man who wakes up one day as a white man. A brilliant, contemporary reworking of Kafka's Metamorphosis, Blackass is an insightful commentary on race, identity, and modern-day Nigeria.

Abby Geni's debut novel The Lightkeepers is as wild as the landscape it describes: A nature photographer embarks on a one-year residency in an isolated, dangerous archipelago of islands off the Californian coast, only to encounter violence and a set of companions she cannot trust. Mysterious, vivid, and original, The Lightkeepers will quickly ensnare readers in its cruelly beautiful world.

Álvaro Enrigue's Sudden Death reads more like an intoxicating adventure than a novel — set around the world in the 16th century, Sudden Death presents familiar players (Galileo, Caravaggio, Anne Boleyn, Cortés, and more) like we've never seen them before. Spectacularly original, Enrigue's daring novel challenges everything readers think they know about European colonialism, history, art, and modernity.

Paul Lisicky's The Narrow Door is a bravely honest memoir of two complex, long-term writer friendships, one with a female novelist and the other with Lisicky's poet ex-husband. Brimming with compassion and tenderness, The Narrow Door explores loss, love, and all the often painful facets of modern relationships.

Amy Gustine's moving debut collection, You Should Pity Us Instead, contains an impressive range of stories about everything from conflict in the Middle East to child abuse and suicide. Yet despite the extraordinary breadth of landscapes and topics in You Should Pity Us Instead, every character comes alive with the emotional depth and empathy of Gustine's writing.

Publication date: Feb. 9

26.Night Sky With Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong

Copper Canyon Press

Peter Bienkowski

Ocean Vuong's stunning debut poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds establishes Vuong as a fierce new talent to be reckoned with. The vulnerable, dreamlike lines in Night Sky with Exit Wounds will stick in the mind long after reading — this book is a masterpiece that captures, with elegance, the raw sorrows and joys of human existence.

Publication date: Apr. 12

27.Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer

Meg Handler / Polaris

Here I Am is Jonathan Safran Foer's first new novel in over a decade. Set in Washington, Here I Am follows a Jewish family on the verge of falling apart while on the other side of the world, life in the Middle East is shattered by a devastating earthquake, and an invasion in Israel.